KinderCare Week 1

So I didn't post this past weekend because I was recovering from a very long week, but I'd love to share some of that with you now!

My first week at KinderCare was awesome:) I am really enjoying the teacher I work with, who has been in KC for 2 years now! There are a possible total of 20 kids in our PreK room, but the greatest we've had is 19. It's similar to the daycares I've been in before, but this time, the staff actually adheres to rules! Example, they make sure that the ratio is always right in the room. If you don't have the right amount of staff per children (depending on the age) in the room, it's against daycare regulations. These people have been so very careful to make sure that I'm never alone with more than 10 kids - yay!!

There are, as always, a few "trouble" children that I haven't quite figured out yet. Some kids are acting the way their parents do; others have a bit of spoiling in them that the other teacher and I are trying to curb:) Some of the kids do not respect me yet, which is hard to accept, but is the truth. The other teacher is trying to explain to them that I will be in this room and that they need to listen to and respect me just like they would her:) Hard stuff for 4 year olds!

The hours are a little hard too - I've got the 9:30-6:30 shift, which is closing. (Thankfully there's an hour for lunch!) I have something after nearly every day of work, so I've been trying to sleep in til 8:30 or so to get my sleep on before tackling the day. Wednesdays and now Mondays, I'll be babysitting from 7ish to 9:30 or so. Tuesdays and Thursdays I am up at Truro church either in my own Bible Study or helping prepare for their Saturday Young Adults worship service. So far, Fridays are my only free evenings, which leaves an opening for a date night:) Please keep this in your prayers - it's very difficult to run from one thing to the other and be able to focus on both:)

Alright, time to get going. Thank goodness for work being so close by, but I still try to be a bit early! Hopefully the next post I can explain some of the stuff we're teaching in the class:)

Thought I had more time....

So my life's been fun this past week or so. I started my new job. LOVE it. The kids are amazing! It's a bit tough to figure out what admin. wants every day, but we're working together on it :P I've gotten to know a few of the other teachers and really enjoy their company. The teachers apparently change classrooms, NOT the students, every hour. So first class is "6th grade" GT class, then my "4th (& 5th)" Stars (also GT), then "5th grade" GT, then back to my Stars. After that, there's about 25 minutes for lunch before a Vocab quiz (daily) then either a pre-made Test or review of said test. Poor kids! I'm hoping to put some fun stuff into their day, like art or more games. They LOVE around the world - no better bribery existed :P

Sean has moved back to NY for a brief period. I didn't realize how quickly he would be leaving til we talked Tuesday and I offered to help him with any moving stuff. One hour later:P I was at his place, making everything fit as well as we could with what he had. It worked out good - 4:30 to 10, with some time for dinner and time to run to the DMV to drop off the plates for his nonexistent car, it was more like 4 1/2 hours to move EVERYTHING from his room. Might not sound like a big deal. People might read this and think "oh be he's a GUY, GUYS don't have a lot of stuff!" Obviously you don't date guys....no offense :P He had 2 desks, 3-5 lamps, an upright dresser, a bookcase, a futon (yeah...everyone groaned when they read that), plus at least 3 bins/tubs of books, plus camera equiptment, computer equiptment, XBOX equiptment, and of course, clothes:P Let's just say I'm buffer than before ;P

Been talking to my friend Fitz(gerald) all week. He got to go to TEXAS to do a sort of internship/crash course/vacation with some friends of his from the 405th (http://www.405th.com/) to make costumes. Now this site is specifically for Halo, but Fitz has also joined the 501st (http://501st.com/) and has created Star Wars costumes as well. He is making ME a costume, which I am STOKED about (yeah note here: geeky girl:P). I'll post up a video later hopefully :) He's coming home though - he's been getting sick from lack of sleep as well as from the fact that he has allergies and the family he's staying with has 7 dogs (and a cat?)....yeesh :( Keep him in prayers please!

Alright and TODAY: I'm off to Chaia's place in Lynchburg :D I'm super excited about going back down there and spending the 4th with some friends! Lots of love, everyone!

One of those days...

Alright, after waking up twice to phone calls for subbing (neither of which I accepted), I finally woke up and picked my own job online:P Yes, silly me, ignore that! Anyway, this came to my most recent good news/bad news day. Wanna hear the good news or bad news first?
*cricket*
Okay, we'll go good. Good today was that I got to work in the elementary school that I used to take a girl I nannied to in the summer months while her parents worked.

Bad news? I came in on the wrong day! My job is for TOMORROW, but I don't have a calendar in my room other than on the laptop, so I didn't check that I didn't have to work today! Oh man! At least the lady in the office was so sweet and understanding. She asked if I wanted to work for half a day as an IA (Instructional Assistant). I decided it was better than nothing and went upstairs to work.

To start off, the teacher had me laminate some things she had created - posters of sorts, I guess. However, I fought tooth and nail with the laminator to get it to work!! I ended up nearly ruining 2 of her posters and had to cut the pages out several times. Finally another teacher helped me out and I got the last 2 done right. I went back to the room to one of the best-behaved classes of Kindergarteners I've seen in a very, very long time. They weren't THE best (that honor is reserved for Mrs. Rodgers that works at the school I student-taught at:) ), but they listened to the teacher and understood the rules of the game, as it were. We had fun playing and completing activities.

However, this is when my day got fun. Around 10 (I was supposed to leave at 11:30), the nice lady from the office came up and asked me if I wanted to work the 2nd part of the day, too:P Seems that another IA had to leave at 12 and I would be replacing her until 3:30 when the kids left. I said yes, slightly begrudgingly, but it worked out well. The second class was quiet for a little while, but their true colors were revealed as they let loose throughout the room:P Needless to say, I wish it was Friday....

But, I experienced 2 IA positions in one day, AND I have a sub teaching job tomorrow at the same place. YAY!!:)

Week 9

May 2nd is here! This is a date that Sean and I were really hoping to be married by, but decided on waiting for job opportunities first. Everyone says this is the smarter route to go - wait until you are solidly established somewhere before you combine 2 households (essentially) into 1. Thanks to the one person that said we should just get married regardless and make it work - sorry we let you down! :( But at the same time, I don't think either one of us is strong enough to make it on our own yet, let alone with each other:P

This week went well. I got my employee number for Fairfax County schools! And....as you read, Friday I subbed for the first time! Very awesome, I enjoyed it even though it was very stressful! I've written it once, but I'll write it again: the office was excited to learn that I actually had my teaching degree and asked me to bring my resume next time! Yes, I'm kicking myself for not having brought it with me the first time, but I'm still excited that there are possibilities that God is putting in my path!

Not a lot of other things happened this week. Sean and I went back to Grace in Lorton. I think we have a winner;) We're going again tomorrow, hopefully with my buddy Alison. This past Sunday I got to talk to the pastor there and catch up on things. I also got to see some old (and some VERY old) friends from my parents' church. Can't wait to talk with some of them tomorrow!

I got to work with the little lamb, Lauren, again this week. She is so precious!! Hopefully I'll be working with her some next week while Mom needs to drive Dad to/from the airport for work stuff:) Mom and I both got to watch her and her little China sister, Anna. That was a blast. Lauren and I did some poetry time on her tango, which always makes her laugh. Anna is starting to babble more and more and even laughed a bit for Mom and I with our ridiculous "peek-a-boo" games!

Alpha at Truro Church went well on Sunday night. I got to take my friend Cortney and introduce her to everyone. I am praying that another friend will be able to go as well. Please pray that he can work tomorrow night into his schedule!

Friday night after work, Sean and I met up with Anna, Alison, Meredith, and Cortney to see the new X-Men movie. Holy cow, very awesome movie! I will say at one point(okay a whole scene) I got a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach and did not let go of Sean's arm for the entire 5-8 minutes of that scene! If you go see the movie, you'll know;) Definitely recommended. Sean liked it, too!

Today Mom, Sam, Sean, and I moved the rest of Sean's stuff out of the house:( His room downstairs is now bare except for a carpet lying on the ground that he left for Mom. I went to visit him after he had unpacked most of his stuff and brought him back here to watch Zoolander with Tim and Meredith and myself. It's weird not having him in the house though. I'll be very glad when we get married and I won't have to part with him at the end of the day!!

Alright, getting up in...9 hours to get ready for church - yippee!:) I praise God that things are turning around here! This upcoming week: Graduation Ceremony! with Ben Stein giving the Commencement Speech!!!!!

Hanging on to Hope

I set up my employee account yesterday with FCPS - whoot! However, I couldn't find any jobs for tomorrow. "No problem," I think, "I'll wake up and check periodically through the night."

I went to bed around 11 after checking 2-3 times. I woke up at 3:15 and 5:15 to check - both times nothing was there. I finally got up by 8, checked, nothing. I'm still hanging on to the hope that there is a job out there for me to do. I guess since that's not happening today, as it is 9:33 and school started over an hour ago, I'll work on creating a substitute folder. I'm hoping to put a bit of every SOL for the grades I can teach (K-6th) into a folder so that I can just look through it and see what the students should know/not know. I WISH that Fairfax County would put their Pacing Guides online so that I could see what SOLs were currently being taught in the classroom and I could have matching worksheets in case students finished prearranged work early....yeah maybe that's an overachiever ideal, but I'd love to do that and show that I'm really really ready to teach some kids!

Today I must also convince Sean to have his car looked at. It's been stalling randomly...usually while he's on 495 or another busy "cut-through" to his work in Vienna. Yikes! I'm hoping that he'll seriously consider taking it in ASAP, but only God knows what happens every day of our lives:)

4 days....

Tomorrow I'm waking up at 4:30 to get Sean to the train station by 5:45. He's going to Arlington (near my home, ironically) to go to 3 days' worth of meetings with the company he's working for. He'll be staying at my house and taking the metro to and from places.

And I'm stuck here at work:P

I guess I should be happy I have a job to keep me occupied. Tomorrow's my first day with the 3 year olds full time as their teacher. Holy cow. I'm actually gonna be a teacher tomorrow. I'm very excited! But I'm also going to miss Sean a lot. We've been working well with each other and though we've had some difficult times, we're getting better at the good times:) I know it'll especially be hard because I can't have my cell phone at work (only during my lunch break) and Sean's meetings are after 5 at night when I'm done work. We'll see how this works out. Hopefully "absence makes the heart grow fonder" is truthful!

Alright, gotta focus on the classroom. After all, I start there tomorrow:) One thing I really want to do in this classroom is help the kids learn. After talking with the other teacher about what they can and (mostly) what they can't do, I want to help them become a bit more focused. Now I know I can put some high expectations on these kids, but I don't care. I know most of them, if not all of them, are fully capable of learning things such as the numbers 1-10 and A-J at least by summer! They might be pre-preschool, but I want these kids to get excited about learning before they reach the next stage of life:)

Tomorrow I'm going to try to follow the schedule that the previous teacher had out for me. She planned out the entire week - following the curriculum that she was given mostly. I'm hoping the kids and I will work together well:) If you're reading this, please keep me in prayers tomorrow! We're going to work on making rules together as well - I've always wanted to do this with my own classroom before I even did my student teaching. I know that if the kids are making the rules with me, many of them will try not to break them:)

Alright, off to bed. Oof, and did I mention that I'm coming down with something? My voice is fading - Sean thought it was hilarious that I'd try to yell at him and it came out in squeaks - and I don't feel so hot. Mom gave me a cocktail of drugs to find in my room and down before I head off to bed. Hopefully I'll get some good sleep and fight this sickness ASAP! All I need are parents running away with their kids because I'm barking and yelling in a hoarse voice :P

G'night!

Be Proud?

So, I am officially graduated. I have paid off the school for what I owe. May will bring SallieMae payments. I sent in 3-4 cover letters and resumes since I graduated. The 5th cover letter and resume got me my first job!!!! Let me break it down, because only God would have let this happen:)

I determined that as much as I want to teach and get all the benefits that come with it, God has not put that job near me at the moment. I have checked Bedford County, Lynchburg City, and Amherst County (where I student taught) consistently every day for a month. Nothing:P I also determined that as much as I want to teach, I don't want to take over someone else's classroom starting halfway through the new year. I know that I'd be fine eventually, but not having time to prepare, like the week before school starts, and trying to come up with discipline charts, getting to know the students, reviewing everything they know, etc, is tough! I chose to start looking at jobs that are close to my major, but not exactly.

So, I, like any normal college grad of Liberty, got an application for Barnes and Noble (across the street from school)to fill out. And downloaded one for Michaels. I filled them both out but didn't get over to bring them to the stores. I decided to check out daycares, since I loved working at the Butterfly House back home with "Miss Mary Kate!!" (aka Rabbit :) ). There are a few near me, but one that I've passed by almost daily caught my eye. I decided that even though it didn't say anything at all about employment on their website, I would try to apply there.

I fixed my resume up nicely and added a cover letter, emphasizing my previous work with the Butterfly House Daycare and working with a variety of special need children. I was going to mail it, but I decided I would do it later. The next day, I determined that I would stop and bring the papers in - my place is seriously about 5 minutes from it, so it would have been ridiculous;) I got there just before 10am, asked the secretary about possible job openings, and she gave me an application to fill out while I waited for the director! I got to meet the director - nice lady of course:) - and talked with her about my experience with different ages. She took the application as well as my resume and cover letter and said she'd call if they could use me.

Well....around 4pm that day, she called!!! I will be making just above minimum wage - less than I've made in either of my old jobs, but I will take it! The director is going to let me start on MONDAY:) I'll be working with infants and toddlers - *sigh* be still my heart! After a few weeks, she said she could use me as a 3-year-old teacher because the current one is moving soon:) Amaaaaazing:D I was so excited I'm surprised I didn't scream in her ear! As stated before, the pay is not too great, but the work is worth it!

Unfortunately, like many tales, this one has an "ish to sad" ending. I called my mom to let her know about it. (I think this is the part where I screamed.) Anyway, she was very quiet and I joked, saying something like "your silence is very reassuring" (Monster's Inc?). She kind of joked back, but then told me I'm worth much more than what they'll be paying me and that I should be looking for a better job.

That. hurt. a lot. I felt so much rejection, even if it wasn't intentional (which I'm sure it wasn't). My goal after I graduated was to get a job that 1) I loved and 2) would let me start my climb of independence. No the pay won't be as much as I've made before, but I don't mind. I get to work with kids. I get to help them learn about the world around them, see their smiles, wipe away their tears (and boogers). That's why I wanted to be a teacher. I see this as a step. I won't let anyone steal my joy about this moment in my life.

....then why can't I see the monitor through my blurry tears?